07 July 2025

30 June 2025

Museum Monday 2025/26

 


detail of Untitled (Cross and Circles), pieced by Warren Wise & quilted by Willia Ete Graham, currently on display at BAM/PFA as part of Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California

25 June 2025

Orinda Theater Classic Movie Matinee: The 5,000 Fingers of Dr T


The Castro Theater renovations are stretching on, so when the SF Silent Film Festival announced that this year's edition, slated for November, will be at the Orinda Theater, I went to check it out.

Last year's substitute location, the Palace of Fine Arts, though lovely, was in a tricky location for most people, particularly non-drivers (I realized I couldn't go to the first or last movies of the day, as getting to & from the venue took so much time). There were also very few food options, though the Festival did bring in some food trucks. The Orinda Theater, it turns out, is a very brief & convenient walk from the Orinda BART station; you don't even have to cross a street! (I have to change trains to get there from where I live, & it's supposed to be a timed transfer but hahaha, I usually have to wait ten to fifteen minutes for the transfer train but it's still easier than the Palace) There's food available in the theater itself, & their popcorn is like what we used to get at the Castro, before the new owners wrecked the snack bar, & there are lots of different restaurants immediately around the theater, with the usual options (Indian, Japanese, Vietnamese, bistro, Greek, pizza, hamburgers). The main auditorium of the theater is quite large, & the whole building is period-appropriate Art Deco-ish. I think it's a good choice. My one concern is about the restrooms. I felt that at the Castro they should have stuck some port-a-potties outside, & they'll need to do the same here. That's one thing I'll give the Palace of Fine Arts – the interior of their theater is pretty non-descript, but they had generous restroom arrangements.

When I took my little field trip to scout the theater, I was only able to walk around outside & in the general vicinity. But I learned they have a Classic Movie Matinee the last Tuesday of every month. The selection for June was The 5,000 Fingers of Dr T, which I had never seen. I had a vague sense that Dr Seuss was connected to it. Indeed he was! He came up with the story, wrote the script, & wrote the lyrics (it's a musical). It was such a box-office bomb that he turned his back on Hollywood, & vice versa. But in the way of such things, what the movie-going public of 1953 couldn't stomach was very much to the taste of a smaller but vociferous group of fans who came across it on TV, & a cult was born.


The movie was produced by Stanley Kramer, & the combination of Stanley Kramer & Dr Seuss is not even the most improbable thing about this movie. It concerns a boy, Bartholomew Collins, who takes piano lessons from the acerbic Dr Terwilliger, who berates him for not practicing enough. There's also the boy's widowed mother, & a friendly plumber. The boy falls asleep & most of the movie is an Oz-like (referring to the 1939 film, not the books) dream that reflects the boy's life & worries back in distorted (but maybe basically accurate) form.

Before we saw the movie, though, we were treated to selected short subjects, old-school-movie-going-style. There was a newsreel from the 1960s (President Johnson was calling for a national day of prayers & recollection over America's racial strife – the never-ending story). There were some astutely chosen cartoons: a Warner Brothers Merrie Melodies adaptation of Seuss's Horton Hatches the Egg, a Puppetoons short of Seuss's The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins,  &, to tie in with the piano theme, a short of a very young Liberace (billed as "Walter Liberace") playing the Tiger Rag while the camera occasionally cut to two young women standing around the piano, grinning at us vacantly & bopping uneasily. Then film critic & program curator Matías Bombal came out, wearing a dazzling robe that turned out to be one of the original costumes for Dr Terwilliger, to introduce the film. His comments were pleasantly chatty but to the point, giving us a brief history of the film & its troubles & eventual emergence into the select company of cult classics. He also told us that we were about to see a new restoration, with the Technicolor at its most resplendent.

The movie is indeed fantastic to look at, & utterly bizarre. Hollywood gets slated a lot for its lack of originality, but sometimes it produces something so strange you have to wonder what they were thinking (well, what the money people were thinking; the creative people were just being creative). Dr Terwilliger hates all musical instruments that aren't pianos, & has a dungeon in which he keeps them & their players, leading to an extended & wonderful musical number, with many Seussian-style instruments played by greenish, mostly shirtless male dancers, that seems like a collaboration between Busby Berkeley & Bosch. The Doctor has invented a gigantic piano that will be played simultaneously by Bartholomew & 499 other boys (500 boys, ten fingers each, hence Dr T's 5,000 fingers). This musical triumph will somehow ensure the success of Dr Terwilliger's "happy fingers" institute as well as the continued devotion to the doctor of Bart's widowed mother. I'll stop the plot summary there, because while the plot is entertaining enough, the look of the film is what really grabs the attention.

The colors are saturated & glowing. I recollect lots of dark purples, golden shades of orange, teetering skyscrapers, curved scarlet ladders that go nowhere, pickle juice that sparkles in its pale green. The musical numbers are quite delightful; it's too bad that after the initial previews the studio cut several of them (if you're making a crazy musical, there's no point in trimming it back to half crazy). Seuss's lyrics are, as you might expect, clever & witty, & the music by Frederick Hollander & Morris Stoloff is catchy & charming (despite its financial failure, the movie was remembered at Oscar time with a nomination for Best Scoring of a Musical Picture; it lost to Alfred Newman for Call Me Madam).


The movie is also very well cast. Tommy Rettig as Bartholomew manages the tricky task of representing what is supposed to be a "typical American boy" while not being repulsive (usually that type, particularly from the mid-century – think of any Disney live-action show from the 1950s or 1960s – just creeps me out, but Rettig is very appealing). Hans Conried is menacing but amusing, even a bit endearing, as Dr Terwilliger. Peter Lind Hayes is both dry & warm as the plumber, Mr Zabladowski, & Mary Healy is winsome as the widowed mother. But it's the whole look of the film, the wildness of its conceptions, the wit of its performance, that really carry the day.

A friend of mine who had seen the movie many years ago & was less entertained than I was texted to me, "Aren't you supposed to be able to read all sorts of Freudian & Cold War subtext into it?" Yes indeed, I can certainly see that. There's a lot of mid-century-movie-Freudianism about the boy & his mother (who is pretty much the only woman in the entire film) & his search for a father figure (the plumber rather than Dr Terwilliger). I have to say, for 1950s Hollywood Freud the handling is fairly light, certainly when compared to some of Hitchcock's films. And for the Cold War, there is the fight against a somewhat ludicrous but genuinely threatening authoritarian, one who stifles dissent & insists on having his rules obeyed endlessly & automatically, as well as a device that switches the balance of power & which gets referred to as "atomic". But I would be surprised if there weren't also theories about a queer (male) subtext: the dreams of our all-American lad seem to involve more partly nude men than you usually see in a 1950s musical, he seems very determined to have his mother marry the plumber, mostly so he & his new Dad can have a homosocial relationship (fishing together, like something out of The Wind in the Willows), &, as mentioned, the only female around is the boy's mother. And of course the whole impetus of the film is about expressing your individuality in the face of a repressive, conformist, & unaccepting authority.

I'm not thrilled that the rebellion takes the form of refusing to practice the piano. The value of music is too obvious to need my insistence, & you get there by practicing. The suggestion that "normal" children, particularly boys, don't like practicing piano is a toxic cliché. But I can look past that annoyance, which is sort of the key that unlocks the wildness of the film. I'm ready to join the cult.

Next up, on 29 July, is The Asphalt Jungle, which I also have never seen.


23 June 2025

Another Opening, Another Show: July 2025

July is typically a slow month for performances, but this July seems particularly slow, not that there isn't more than enough listed below to take you out of your residence & yourself for an evening or two. I'll take this opportunity to reiterate that this list is, to use a recently overused word, curated; basically, something needs to be something I could or would, given world enough & time, go to experience. This means certain things don't get listed: anything too rock/rap/pop oriented, anything too electronica, anything that promises us a DJ (a promise meaning there will be bad music played much too loudly). We need more space in this culture for the obscure, the recondite, the artsy, the offbeat, the niche, the so-called unpopular. Go & seek these things out!

There are some terrific on-going things not listed below, as they started in earlier months: the Ruth Asawa exhibit at SFMOMA, the Wayne Thiebaud exhibit at the Legion of Honor, & the African-American Quilt show at BAM/PFA are three that are worth visiting & re-visiting.

And best wishes to all of us as we try to get through the worst of all holidays, the Fourth of July. Explosions. Fire danger. Patriotism. How toxic, & how typically American that the day features that most disgusting & even immoral of competitions, the eating contest. Thank God & hops for beer, which might help us float through to August, which promises to be more exciting (which is a way of saying it promises to be more promising).

Theatrical
San Francisco Playhouse presents My Fair Lady, opening 3 July & running through 13 September.

The SF Mime Troupe presents Disruption: A Musical Farce at various outdoor venues from 4 July to 3 August; check here for specific locations & dates.

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley presents Cymbeline, directed by Glenn Havlan & Gaby Schneider, from 4 to 20 July at the John Hinkel Park Amphitheater.

New Conservatory Theater Center brings back its production of the musical Ride the Cyclone, with book, music, & lyrics by Jacob Richmond & Brooke Maxwell, directed & choreographed by Stephanie Temple, with musical direction by Ben Prince, from 11 July to 15 August.

The Oakland Theater Project presents Lorraine Hansberry's final play, Les Blancs, adapted by Robert Nemiroff & directed by James Mercer II, from 11 to 27 July.

Aurora Theater presents Jane Wagner's one-person show, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, directed by Jennifer King, with Marga Gomez in the role originated by Lily Tomlin, & that runs from 12 July to 10 August.

At the Marsh San Francisco, Koorosh Ostowari’s Grandma’s Million-Dollar Scheme: A Comedy-Drama written & performed by Ostowari (directed by David Ford), a one-person show about a mostly true encounter between his younger get-rich-quick-in-real-estate self & a scheming grandmother, plays Saturdays starting on 12 July through 23 August; also at the Marsh San Francisco, Pearl Ong’s Night Driver, written & performed by Ong (& also directed by David Ford), asking the question "What’s a Hong Kong princess doing driving a cab in San Francisco?  And what does her very proper mother make of it?", also plays Saturdays (at an earlier time from Ostowari's show), starting 19 July through 23 August.

Shotgun Players presents The Magnolia Ballet by Terry Guest, directed by AeJay Antonis Marquis, a poetic look at four Black men in the American South, from 12 July to 10 August.

The Marsh Berkeley presents Candace Johnson’s Scat-ter Brain: The Music of ADHD, written & performed by Johnson, a one-person semi-autobiographical musical about receiving a diagnosis of ADHD as a 40+ adult; the show starts 19 July & runs on Saturdays through 13 September (no show on 30 August).

The San Leandro Players present Agatha Christie's The Hollow, directed by Amy Cook, from 19 July through 17 August.

Garrison Keillor Tonight, a one-person show featuring the writer & radio host, will take place at the Presidio Theater on 20 July (despite the title, the show is actually a matinee)..

Operatic
Pocket Opera presents its version of Offenbach's La Vie Parisienne, with music direction by Paul Schrage & stage direction by Phil Lowery, on 13 July at the Hillside Club in Berkeley, 20 July at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, & 27 July at the Gunn Theater in the Legion of Honor, San Francisco.

Vocalists
San Francisco Opera's Merola Program presents the Schwabacher Summer Concert: It’s Complicated – Love & Opera, conducted by William Long & directed by Omer Ben Seadia & Elio Bucky, featuring the Merolini in extended scenes from operas by Donizetti, Puccini, & Gounod, & that's 10 & 12 July at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

On 27 July at the Piedmont Center for the Arts, Festival Opera's Salon Series presents Baroque Queens, a program featuring mezzo-soprano Nikola Printz, with Joshua Mikus-Mahoney on cello, Jon Mendle on theorbo & baroque guitar, & Zachary Gordin on harpsichord, sizzling through an array of "legendary heroines, sorceresses, and queens from the past".

Orchestral
Stephanie Childress leads the San Francisco Symphony in what they're calling a Tchaikovsky Spectacular, featuring selection from Sleeping Beauty, the Violin Concerto (with soloist Blake Pouliot), the Romeo and Juliet, Fantasy-Overture, & the 1812 Overture, & that's 10 July at the Frost Amphitheater at Stanford & 11 July at Davies Hall.

On 12 - 13 July, Sunny Xia leads TwoSet Violin (Brett Yang & Eddy Chen) along with the San Francisco Symphony in "a night of Sacrilegious Games!" (details of the program have not yet been announced).

On 23 July at Davies Hall, Robert Moody leads the Time for Three string trio (Ranaan Meyer, double bass & vocals; Nicolas Kendall, violin & vocals; & Charles Yang, violin & vocals) along with the San Francisco Symphony in Christopher Theofanidis's Rainbow Body, Mason Bates's Silicon Hymnal, & Bernstein's Symphonic Dances from West Side Story.

Instrumental
Pianists Rachel Breen & Sergey Belyavsky perform Carnivals: from Schumann to Strauss to Stravinsky, featuring Schumann's Carnaval Opus 9, Stravinsky's Three Movements from Petrushka, Moritz Rosenthal's Carnaval de Vienne, & more, at the Piedmont Piano Company on 26 July.

Pianist Alex Stabile will perform works by Bach & Ravel as well as selections from Rachmaninoff’s Études-Tableaux Opus 39 at the Piedmont Piano Company on 27 July.

Early / Baroque Music
The San Francisco Early Music Society celebrates the legacy of William Byrd, a Catholic in Protestant Elizabethan England, with the presentation at Grace Cathedral on 17 - 18 July of Secret Byrd, an immersive concert featuring The Gesualdo Six from the UK & our the local Wildcat Viols in collaboration with Concert Theatre Works.

Jazz, Blues, Folk
Monsieur Periné brings their fusion of the "jazz manouche style of Django Reinhardt with dance-inspiring Latin American rhythms" to the SF Jazz Center from 17 to 20 July.

On 19, 21, & 22 July, Paul Simon (yes, that Paul Simon) will perform his new album Seven Psalms, "along with new arrangements of familiar favorites"; though the website says he is performing "in intimate venues with pristine acoustics", the concerts are nonetheless in Davies Hall.

This seems like a bit of an oddity, as orchestras are collective & the blues seems like an individualist art form, but Morgan Freeman’s Symphonic Blues Experience, featuring "cinematic narration" by Freeman as well as an in-person appearance, surveys the Delta Blues with performances by musicians from the Ground Zero Blues Club as well as the San Francisco Symphony, & that's at Davies Hall on 25 July.

Ravi Coltrane visits the SF Jazz Center for a week as Resident Artistic Director, with a Listening Party on 23 July, his group Coltraxx (Coltrane on tenor & soprano saxophones, David Virelles on keyboards, Dezron Douglas on bass, Johnathan Blake on drums) on 24 - 25 July, & the Ravi Coltrane Quintet (Coltrane on tenor & soprano saxophone, Jonathan Finlayson on trumpet, Robin Eubanks on trombone, Gadi Lehavi on keyboards, & Elé Howell on drums) on 26 - 27 July.

Dance
ODC Dance presents Summer Sampler, featuring the world premieres of Nothing’s Going to Make Sense (choreography by KT Nelson) & Theories of Time (choreography by Mia J Chong), as well as 10,000 Steps: A Dance About Its Own Making (choreography by Catherine Galasso), & that's 17 - 20 July at the ODC Theater.

Art Means Painting
The Minnesota Street Project Foundation presents the 2025 San Francisco Art Book Fair, featuring an "exhibition and celebration of printed material from independent publishers, artists, designers, collectors, and enthusiasts from around the world", & that's from 11 to 13 July.

Black Spaces: Reclaim & Remain opens at the Oakland Museum of California on 18 July.
Ferlinghetti for San Francisco, featuring artworks on paper created by the renowned poet & publisher, opens at the Legion of Honor on 19 July.

Cinematic
Some film series launch this month at BAM/PFA: Mikio Naruse: The Auteur as Salaryman, exploring the works of the great Japanese filmmaker, begins 3 July, with movies screening through 21 December; & Smiles of a Summer Night: Swedish Auteurs, featuring works by Ingmar Bergman & other Swedish filmmakers, opens 11 July, with movies screening through 29 August.

The second Fraenkel Film Festival, sponsored by the Fraenkel Gallery & featuring films chosen by visual artists, runs at the Roxie Theater from 9 to 19 July (all proceeds will benefit the Roxie); there's a terrific line-up of movies, & some that caught my eye are Chaplin's The Great Dictator, Dorothy Arzner's Merrily We Go to Hell, & The Wizard of Oz.

The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival opens 17 July & runs through 3 August; check here for films & locations.

On 19 July, as part of the Legion of Honor's centennial celebration, the museum will host a free showing of Hitchcock's Vertigo, which includes several scenes shot on location at the Legion.

Godzilla Fest 2025 plays at the Balboa Theater from 18 to 20 July; check out the schedule here. If only Godzilla was the worst monster we faced these days. . . 

Museum Monday 2025/25

 


detail of The Legend of Brutus and Portia by Jacopo del Sellaio, now at the Legion of Honor

18 June 2025

San Francisco Opera: Idomeneo


For some time now I have been saying to anyone who wants to listen, as well as to many who do not, that Idomeneo is the one Mozart opera I have never really connected with (to forestall the question, I love Clemenza di Tito, as well as all baroque opera, so this is not an objection to opera seria or stylized music drama in general). Yet I persist in trying! On Tuesday night I was at the second performance of San Francisco Opera's latest production of the piece. Idomeneo & I remain unconnected.

Not that I don't see things to admire in it: mostly musical things. Eun Sun Kim led a crisp ensemble in music that was powerful & tender. San Francisco Opera had assembled a sterling cast – Matthew Polenzani in the title tole; Daniela Mack as his son Idamante; Ying Fang as Ilia, a Trojan princess loved by Idamante; Elza van den Heever as the volatile Elettra, in unrequited love with Idamante; Alek Shrader as the counselor Arbace – who all sang with beautiful sound, but beauty used to expressive purposes; the vocal fireworks were explosive, the yearning & sorrow genuine. (I have to give a special mention to Mack, who was singing despite some unannounced vocal cord issues; she could not continue singing during Act 3 & instead mimed the role while Laura Krumm sang offstage – kudos to both of them for doing so beautifully under physically difficult circumstances. During the curtain calls company director Matthew Shilvock explained the situation & introduced Krumm.)

Ying Fang was making her San Francisco Opera debut & her tender & lively performance as the conflicted Ilia confirmed advanced word of her extremely beautiful voice & skillful acting. There were also excellent contributions from some current Adler Fellows: Georgiana Adams & Mary Hoskins as Cretan Women, Samuel White & Olivier Zerouali as Trojan Men, Samuel White as the High Priest of Neptune, & particularly Jongwon Han as the Voice of the Oracel.

Idomeneo-inspired lighting effects in the opera house lobby before the show.

It was an excellent performance of early prime Mozart, musically speaking. I know someone who was there last night after also hearing Saturday's opening, & he is currently planning a third & maybe fourth visit. But all he cares about is singing. He doesn't care about staging, or the drama, & he sits in the last row of the second balcony, a spot from which you can barely see what's going on way down on the stage anyway.

For people like me, who prefer the front row of the orchestra & consider opera a theatrical form, the production by Lindy Hume was less satisfying. I will say whatever role she may have had in helping the singers shape their characters & their interactions paid off; the performers were all convincing – though there were some oddities; for example, when Elettra, thinking she & Idamante are being sent off together, sings that although he loves another, she is going to turn that around & make him love her – when she sings that, surely Idamante shouldn't be standing there, directly addressed by her? What is he supposed to do with that? We don't know, because Mozart & his librettist Giambattista Varesco didn't give him any response. He just looks noble & stricken. But how could an honorable young man like Idamante not protest immediately that he loves Ilia, even if (he thinks) she doesn't return his love, & how could he proceed with the trip as if Elettra hadn't announced to him that she was going to seduce him?

The staging struck me as mostly Modernizing Update 101: there is a unit set, a large boxy room with large doors on the back & on the sides. Everything is overwhelmingly white, black, or gray (with the exception of a red cloth that gets carried around by Idomeneo when he is trying to sacrifice to Neptune in Act 3, & some green branches – inevitably, the rebirth of hope – carried by the chorus at the very end. But after 3 and a half hours, these bits of color didn't do much, at least for one exhausted viewer. There are projections against the walls of the room: some effective shots of the sea (some color here; lots of deep blues) at the beginning of the opera. During emotional moments, abstract blotches swirl around the walls, to match the inner tumult, a device that might have been more effective if it had been used less often. During emotional moments (Idomeneo's Fuor del mar, Elettra's D'Oreste, d'Ajace) characters will, naturally, tear off their outer garments. There are, of course, many chairs on stage. They get moved, re-arranged, sometimes thrown, occasionally sat in.

The costumes are mostly contemporary, with some odd touches: a couple of the guards, as well as some of the higher aristocracy, wear uniforms or suits surmounted by a shoulder cape of shiny black feathers. When Elettra & Idamanta are supposed to leave on their voyage, their outfits have odd golden filigree added to the back & shoulders. The clothes are almost all black, & struck me as drab & ugly. At the beginning of the opera, when the Trojan prisoners are being freed, they line up, sort of, & go up to a table where some guards give them envelopes, which, when opened, have a paper in them. I am unclear on what was supposed to be happening there. I assume it was meant to represent some sort of sign that they were now free (maybe the papers were new legal ID?) but it struck me as mostly the theatrical equivalent of busy-work, the kind of thing you do when you feel something needs to be happening on stage other than someone standing there singing, no matter how beautifully, a noble though perhaps slightly repetitious sentiment.


So the production wasn't helping things, in my view, but I have some issues with the opera itself. I have speculated to some that the reason I don't connect with Idomeneo is that we're promised a sea monster but he only shows up offstage. I'm only half-kidding about this, because the thing is, most opportunities for drama in this story are, like the sea monster, shoved offstage. The crux of the drama is that Idomeneo, returning to his kingdom of Crete after the fall of Troy, is caught in a huge & deadly storm &, apparently not having read as many fairy tales as I have, tries to placate Neptune by promising to sacrifice to him the first living creature he sees on land, which of course turns out to be his son. (Think of the dramatic fireworks Handel made out of a similar vow & a similar dilemma in Jephtha, & you'll see what's missing here.) In his sorrow Idomeneo, apparently not having read as much Greek mythology as I have, thinks he can outwit the god's anger by just sending Idamante away on a long trip. This doesn't work, of course, & the even angrier Neptune, deprived of his human sacrifice, sends a rampaging sea monster to attack the king's city.

Idomeneo doesn't tell his son, until the very end, about the vow. He just shuns him, orders him away, & generally rejects him. Presumably this is done to protect Idamante, who seems like the type to offer himself as a sacrifice if honor commands, but Idomeneo's evasive ways cause his son probably more pain than a straightforward explanation would have. What we end up with is hours of the father being abrupt & inexplicably (in the eyes of Idamante) unloving, while the son wonders unhappily what he did wrong. There isn't a lot of development there, mostly restatement. Some of the articles in the program-book note that Mozart's troubled relationship with his own father (or other father-figures) entered into his work here. On the one hand, sure, but on the other, so what? The only reason we have any interest in the troubled relationship of these long-dead men is that one of them created art that keeps our interest. And the art has to continue to hold our interest & to stand on its own apart from any psychobiography of the artist.

The motor of this drama is the anger of Neptune, but the drama's handling of it is fundamentally incoherent. Everything is driven by the sea god's implacable anger: the deadly storms, Idomeneo's vow, his attempt to evade fulfilling that vow, the attack of the sea monster. . .  There is a daring & challenging indictment being drawn up about the cruelty of the gods &, by implication, the religion that surrounds them. And then, abruptly, near the end of the opera, the sting is removed: Neptune, having apparently checked a calendar to see what year it is & realizing that the alternative is to become nothing more than a fancy fountain ornament, decides he'd better get on board with the Enlightenment. So he announces that Love & Reason are Everything, & that his commands, which called pretty clearly for a human sacrifice or else, had been completely misunderstood & instead what he obviously meant was that Idomeneo should step aside as King & let Idamante take over after he marries Ilia. Elettra gets her big number & goes offstage, presumably to kill herself, thereby removing the last obstacle to a happy ending, if not for her then at least for everyone else. Well, not quite everyone: I guess it's too bad about those hundreds of people killed by the rampaging sea monster! Maybe the sea monster also misunderstood what Neptune wanted. (I am reminded of Jane Campion's The Piano, in which a sincerely meant but barely plausible happy ending is tacked on to the story, completely undercutting everything we've just spent hours watching.)

So I remain unconvinced by Idomeneo. But if you want to hear some glorious music, sure, go up to the balcony, sit back, & bask in the sonic splendors. But you may want to keep your eyes closed. Check here for remaining performances.